


Fundamental Forces

by lady_valkyria



Series: Something just like this [1]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: (because author is a nerd), (because poor Yuzu has shitty luck and no chill), Character Study, Dialogue? What is dialogue?, Feels!Vomit, Gen, M/M, Some angst, Vague references to Physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 01:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10401111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_valkyria/pseuds/lady_valkyria
Summary: There's four fundamental forces in the universe: gravitational, electromagnetism, weak nuclear and strong nuclear.Yuzuru Hanyu is familiar with all of them, and would like to propose another.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo, pro-level lurker here *SHAME~!*. I was reading about fundamental forces and astrophysics the other day (as one does) and this bunny wouldn't get out of my head, so. Have the product of my nerdiness about both Physics and Figure Skating.
> 
> (It's been a while since I wrote anything. Rustiness could happen. Reader discretion is advised :P)

 

**Gravitation**

 

Gravity’s been an old, bittersweet friend of Yuzuru’s since long before he had a name for it. He remembers his first real taste of it vividly, on the ice for the first time, hanging to his sister’s coattails while trying to stay on his feet. Failing, and stubbornly trying again; until he could glide around effortlessly and think himself victorious.

 

Then, when his relationship with the ice started to get serious, so too did the one with gravity. Through blood, sweat and tears, he came to understand the futility of trying to win a battle against the laws of physics: you can’t jump far enough to escape the fall, gravity will always pull you in. The reunion is not always welcome: the ever-growing collection of bruises on his body can attest to that. But then there are times when, if he times everything perfectly, the touch back on the ice feels like the flow of a river, smooth and deeply powerful. When he feels in tune with the universe around him and gravity is just keeping his feet connected to the ice while his soul soars high up through the heavens.

 

He grows up, and gravity pops up in his studies and gets its name. He begins to understand, then, to put numbers and formulas to something he’s so closely entwined with. He learns why it happens, where it comes from. How it keeps everything he knows anchored, but also has the power to rip the fabric of the universe apart.

 

He looks up black holes once, spends a whole evening after skating practice reading and watching documentaries on them. That’s the first time he feels truly small, insignificant, in the face of what is out there. Nanami-sensei asks why he seems gloomy the next day: he tries to just grin and bear it, hide away inside the way the darkness of the night seemed to creep up his walls and how he felt terrified, unable to sleep. He tries to make it go away.

 

It does, eventually. He doesn’t think about it again.

 

Until the disaster comes.

 

If he thought gravity could be terrifying, it has nothing on the feeling of it letting you down, of the very earth coming apart beneath your feet.

 

 

 

 

**Electromagnetism**

 

Everything changes after the earthquake. Many things that he took for granted are no longer so, and life turns into a different kind of struggle.

 

Mourn. Rebuild. Survive.

 

Skating seems so very far from what his priorities should be that guilt gnaws at him every day for trying. But what else can he do? What is Yuzuru Hanyu if he can’t skate? If his sacrifice on the ice is the only thing he can offer up to his country’s altar in this time of need, so be it.

 

His world has been turned upside down, a realm of chaotic noise. He’s being pulled in so many directions at once, but only one resonates with any amount of promise. The ice calls to him, a siren song of magnetic intensity, and though part of him thinks him weak for allowing himself to follow, the rest of him knows it’s his only path to salvation.

 

He does his ice-shows, tours the country raising money and sharing his art. Uses every spare, precious moment on the ice to train, to create something that could give back to all those who suffer while he chooses to keep chasing a dream.

 

Something changes again at Worlds, a flip in his magnetic momentum. His ankle throbs painfully while he throws a challenging look at the judges after his free skate, all the turmoil of the past months still carved upon the ice by his blades, sublimated into the most powerful performance of his young life. He feels electricity in the air, the rippling of an oncoming storm, and the charge coils inside his chest, ready to explode.

 

He’s seventeen, and against all odds he gets a bronze medal that tastes a little bit like the start of repaying a debt.

 

The change solidifies when he decides to move to Canada.

 

It is, probably, the most difficult decision he’s had to make, ever. He’s starting to come to terms with the fact that he has to keep skating, to keep getting better if he’s to make it all worth it: if he’s going to leave his country behind, it will have to be for a good enough reason. On the other hand, he still feels like he’s running away, going abroad and playing games while the wounds are not even scarred over back home.

 

Toronto is different. The climate is different, the language is different. There is no recent disaster hanging over anyone’s heads and everyone goes about their day without noticing the slim, nervous Asian kid desperately hanging onto a slip of paper with directions the first time his mother can’t take him to the rink.

 

The only thing that makes it bearable those first few months is his time on the ice.

 

He and his new coaches may not always be able to communicate smoothly, but with time he finds out that skating is indeed universal and things start getting through. He might not be allowed to train his jumps as much as he would have wanted, but once again time proves that working on his skating skills has its rewards.

 

Then there’s _him_.

 

Javier Fernández. A name that’s been around the senior circuit longer than his, but is only now starting to gain momentum. Yuzuru’s seen him in competitions before, followed him with his eyes on the ice, measured and analyzed his jumps.

 

He seems to like edge jumps, like Yuzuru. He also has a beautiful quad salchow, unlike Yuzuru.

 

Yuzuru’s used to being top dog back home; having someone close to watch every day, to model himself against that skates at his level is brand new for him. And while he appreciates the chance to linger after his own practice to watch the Spaniard jump the jumps he’s not yet allowed to, he doesn’t quite know how to respond to the open friendliness that greets him every time they cross paths.

 

In Yuzuru’s mind, Javier is a knotted, convoluted mess of contradictions. They call him ‘lazy’, and he certainly does nothing to dispel that by running away from morning practices and being grumpy when he can’t get away with it; but once he gets onto the ice, he reveals a steel core that keeps him going, trying again and again with a stubbornness that could rival even Yuzuru’s.

 

They say he’s an open book, that you can always see his heart on his face, but Yuzuru disagrees. Javi will joke, and he will laugh, and he will listen to everyone’s tales of woe and misfortune with a friendly pat on the back, but he never really talks about himself, not in any depth. Even when he’s clearly frustrated, or angry -or _lonely_ \- he diffracts attention away from himself and never really tells you anything.

 

Yuzuru, though, he sees through all of it. He’s used to watching himself in the mirror, after all.

 

And so, even though he still doesn’t get many things in this new corner of the universe, he gets Javier. He aligns with him naturally, like a compass to Earth’s magnetic field; encourages his advances shyly, in the only way he knows. Basks in the attention because they should be rivals, civil and not much more, but if Javier thinks Yuzuru’s worth making the effort, Yuzuru’s happy to reciprocate.

 

Yuzuru’s not sure when he started to feel the sparks dancing between them, the electric current through his spine when Javier would put his hands on him. He’s long abandoned himself to the storm.

 

 

 

 

**Weak nuclear**

 

Being an Olympic Champion feels weird. He’s the same Yuzuru Hanyu he’s always been, but at the same time, he guesses he’s not. Not anymore.

 

All his life since that first brush with the ice -and gravity- he’s been working up to this. Training, hurting for this. Hoping for this. Now, a world record and a gold medal richer, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. It’s like something about him has changed, something on a subatomic level that he has no words in either Japanese or English to describe. The Olympic ice in Sochi seems like a single point, a moment in time that was over too fast to register, when some things fell apart to become new things. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

 

He still carries the fallout from that moment with him, everywhere he goes. He may be ‘champion’ or ‘undeserving’ depending on who you ask, but either way the weight on his shoulders gets heavier every day.

 

The only way he’s ever truly known is forward though, so forward he goes. He fights tooth and nail for the last jewel of his triple crown in Saitama, and victory tastes even more sweet on his tongue when he returns Javier’s kiss after everything is said and done. It’s the best congratulations he’s ever received, the resolution to years of pining and wondering, and Yuzuru feels like a weightless being of energy when he pushes his fingers through brown curls and tries to convince himself that it is all real. That after all that’s happened, he gets to have this.

 

He misses greatly the light feeling that being in Javier’s presence generates when he’s back home for the off-season. The level of attention bestowed upon him is a mark of his achievements, of how far he’s come and how many people’s hearts he’s touched, but it can get suffocating and oppressing. His asthma means he’s very familiar with both of those, and just like with his asthma he can never really run away from it, just learn to live with it.

 

The expectations of a whole country on his back, he returns to Toronto to train. Olympic Champion Yuzuru Hanyu looks forward to the season, to continue being Japan’s beacon of hope and keep on improving because the sky is the limit, right?

 

Not-yet-20 Yuzu does want to go further than anyone before, but is more afraid than ever of disappointing all the people who rally behind him. That this new him that was born in Sochi, forged and tempered in Olympic fire, will be too brittle after all to survive for long.

 

Javier knows this, like he always seems to know the depths of Yuzuru’s feelings even when he tries to hide his insecurities in the shadows. He knows and he soothes, plies him with smiles and kisses, takes care of him and lets Yuzuru take care of him in turn, on those times when only feeling needed and useful will calm the storm raging inside.

 

The crash at the Cup of China turns out to be only the first of many tests on his resilience, on his wish to win. He crashes, and hurts, and cries, but burns only in the way a phoenix burns, rising from the ashes to win in Barcelona. That night, with the lights of Javier’s home country shining in the back of his eyelids and the sound of the ocean in his ears, resting in the arms of the person he loves, he ignores the persisting aches and believes it can be done.

 

Nationals are like a punch to the gut. He wins, but can barely stand straight from the pain. He gets surgery, stays in Japan to recover and, for the first time, finds himself missing Toronto. The city had once been a cold, unfriendly place where he just couldn’t see himself as anything more than an outsider; now, it means ice-time, training with Brian and Tracy, having Javier close enough to touch and not through a screen. Yuzuru’s changed enough for Toronto and everything in it to be his home away from home, and a part of him yearns for the ease of his days there; routine, training and Javi’s smiles keeping the creeping doubt away.

 

Even so, he pushes through. He wants to, and even if he didn’t, he feels he has to. It’s what he does.

 

They get to Shanghai for Worlds and he’s not yet feeling his best, but is decided to not let it show. He becomes distant from Javi, knows the Spaniard is hurt by the sudden space without an explanation, but lets it go. They’re competing against each other, after all, so it’s not that out of left field that he would want his own space, right? Brian just looks at them in practice, raises his eyebrows at Yuzuru in question a couple times, but doesn’t say anything. He’s never outwardly asked about what’s going on between them, but he must know. His eyes seem to see right through him, and yet the three of them keep silent.

 

The short program goes more than well, considering. The free… It’s not enough.

 

Yuzuru cheers for Javier, is happy and proud of him for his win, for what it means after all those years he spent clawing himself up from rock bottom; Javi’s own subatomic change and evolution. He’s just sad that it has to come at the expense of his own defeat, too.

 

He thinks he’s managing to keep it all bottled inside, this maelstrom of complicated feelings roaring inside his chest and pressing on his ribs, but then Javi is holding him close by the neck, murmuring softly at him and pressing their foreheads together and he’s lost. Yuzuru cries, and smiles and wants to kiss him right there, so he settles for a hug and accepting all the comfort it provides. Between Javier’s arms he doesn’t have to think about what any of this means outside their bubble and he can, for once, go back to being just Yuzu.

 

And that’s enough for now.

 

 

 

 

**Strong nuclear**

 

Even though his basic Physics course didn’t get much further, Yuzuru still has an inkling of what it is that holds atom nuclei and thus, matter together. That there is a force out there –e _verywhere_ \- capable of keeping protons and neutrons together, much stronger than electromagnetic repulsion or gravity.

 

He thinks he feels it in the quiet hours of the evening, when Javier and him drift inevitably close, staying late at the rink to skate for the simple pleasure of sharing themselves on the ice. He definitely feels it when they fall into bed together, desperately reaching for the other and trying to quench a thirst that never really goes away, hands and lips on skin, heart on heart.

 

He pours all of it into his skating, sublimates that feeling into raw power, becomes one with it. His _Ballade_ is reborn, the beauty of it finally what it should always have been; _Seimei_ burns white hot, incandescent and powerful, a call to his roots.

 

Yuzuru becomes something like a neutron star, so dense, so bright and spinning so fast that the world seems to fall away in awe. Unreachable, but impossible to look away.

 

Spain’s lights are once again witness to his victory, clear and absolute, and though _conquistador_ is Javi’s moniker, Yuzuru still feels like a warrior king on his golden throne when the Spaniard comes to pay his respects at night.

 

His world record performances set the bar higher than ever: a new standard of quality in skating that seems out of reach of anyone but the trailblazer of pure, undiluted talent that Yuzuru became twice now on the ice.

 

Success ends up being a double edged sword, though.

 

After Barcelona, Yuzuru finds himself in a situation he’s never had to face before: he’s not competing against Patrick any longer, not even against Javier, not really. In front of him there’s only the ghost of himself and what he’s already achieved. It’s not even a question of being able to top that, but of people expecting that to happen every time he skates out.

 

To many, Yuzuru feels like a god; untouchable, in his perfection. Yuzuru, when he grits his teeth at the touch of pain on his foot every time he picks for his quad toe, feels far from invincible. It makes him train harder, ignoring the signals in favor of telling himself that losing again would be much more painful.

 

He loves Javi, he does; like he hasn’t loved anyone before. But seeing the plaque with his name at the Cricket Club is still bittersweet for Yuzuru: he wants his World crown back, and the whole world seems to be expecting it.

 

But Fate’s still not done playing with them.

 

Yuzuru’s not pleased with the rink at Boston. It’s on the smaller side, the ice too soft and watery. He doesn’t complain too much, though: everyone gets to skate on it, so everyone has to deal with it. He’s got bigger problems, too, seeing as his left foot’s swelling is not coming down and the pain never truly goes away now. He tries not to notice Javier’s worried gaze every time he tightens his boots, trying to make himself numb to it: if he can’t feel it, there’s no pain.

 

Yuzuru flies in the short, running on frustration and sheer force of will, screaming his determination to the rooftops.

 

He can do it.

 

Javier’s having boot problems of his own; he can’t even skate the day before the free. Yuzuru ignores how it’s becoming more and more difficult to fit his own left foot inside his skates and keeps on practicing, desperate and trying not to show it.

 

He can do it. He can.

 

He can’t.

 

He crashes on the free. He doesn’t even know what’s greater, the physical pain or the emotional pain of feeling it all slip through his fingertips while he’s still on the ice. He was so close. He keeps on skating, to the bitter end, but he knows. He knows it’s gone.

 

Afterwards, Yuzuru watches Javier skate the performance of his life and wants to be happy for him, but he’s too drained to feel much of anything, has gotten a little too good at making himself numb. He smiles and gives his congratulations, gets his medal and lets the photos wash over him. But he’s so tired. He just wants to go home, back to Japan and his family’s home, away from all the expectations and the pressure. Away from the nagging fear that whispers in his ear that this is it, that he won’t be able to overcome this. That he’s too broken to go on.

 

He shuts himself off in his room at the hotel, with little more than a weak reassurance that he’s going to be ok to Brian and his mom.

 

He ignores Javi’s attempts to contact him, shuts off his phone when he can’t bear to look at the accusing flickering light anymore.

 

He doesn’t really sleep; his brain is the only thing that doesn’t come with a handy shut-down button, nowadays. He gets a lot of time to think, though.

 

At the gala, he skates his _Requiem_ like never before. If it’s going to be his last time, then he’s going all out, pouring his whole heart onto the ice for everyone to see. There’s tears in his eyes when he’s done, and he can’t really see the audience, but he feels the energy, something special in the air.

 

Yuzuru doesn’t want to be done with skating, but just in case he has no choice, he feels that was a good enough farewell.

 

When Javier intercepts him back in his room at the hotel, there’s something in his eyes that gives Yuzuru pause and stops him from running away again. A raw vulnerability that he’s never seen away from their moments of intimacy, when all barriers fall down and they see through each other with ease. The Spaniard raises a hand to his face, slowly, cupping his cheek as if scared of not being allowed.

 

“I keep feeling like you’re going to disappear.”

 

Yuzuru’s bottom lip trembles. Javier’s brow furrows.

 

“Please. Don’t disappear.”

 

Yuzuru’s answer is to throw his arms around the other’s neck, holding on tightly and burrowing his face into his neck. He feels strong hands go around his middle, holding back just as tightly. Inhales deeply. Exhales softly.

 

“Congratulations for the win. Sorry for everything else.”

 

He hears a light chuckle above him. Feels a lingering kiss on his temple.

 

“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to be fine. You’ll see.”

 

Yuzuru lets himself fall back against Javier and it feels natural. Right. And even if he isn’t up to being that optimistic yet, he can count on the Spaniard to hold onto that belief for both of them. He just has to keep breathing. Everything else will fall back into its right place eventually.

 

 

 

 

**Love**

 

The laws of Physics say there’s only four fundamental forces in the universe. Yuzuru would like scientists to catalogue love, then, for that, in his experience, has power the other four cannot hope to achieve.

 

It was his love for his country and its people that pushed him out into the big, wide world to try to give back in exchange for letting him pursue his dream.

 

It was his love for Javi that made him grow abroad, gave his heart the tools to build something bigger together than their parts, the experience of being alive with another person by your side.

 

It is his love for skating, after all, that gives him the patience and the drive to heal, to repair the broken pieces of himself that try to ground him against his will. It fuels him through the long weeks of rest away from the ice, through the awkward relearning of jumps and skills that once were like second nature to him, pushes down any doubts that may appear about this being the right path.

 

Yuzuru wraps himself in the love around him and keeps pushing, ever onward to tomorrow. Because he learned long ago that gravity can only keep you down if you don’t get back up.

 

And he always does.

 

(Physics: 0. Yuzuru Hanyu: 1. Take that, Einstein)

**Author's Note:**

> (ETA: You can now find me on twitter [@Valkedictorian](https://twitter.com/Valkedictorian) or on [Curious Cat!](https://curiouscat.me/Valkedictorian))


End file.
